Scrubs – Why and When You Should Use Them

Are you exfoliating your skin? Many of us take the time to make exfoliation a regular part of our face care routines, but we tend to ignore our bodies.

If you aren’t exfoliating your skin, please start, especially now that winter is coming (yes, that is a deliberate Game of Thrones reference!). In order for our skin to look and feel its best, we need to get rid of all of those excess dead skin cells. Even though our bodies continually produce new skin cells, over time, this process slows down as we age. What this means is that dead skin cells build up on the top layer of our skin. When there’s a build-up of dead skin cells, our skin doesn’t look its best and problems can develop.

So, how does exfoliation help our skin? Lots of ways!

Smoother, Toned, and Brighter Skin

With regular exfoliation, you can get rid of all of those yucky dead skin cells leaving you with smooth, glowing skin that looks and feels amazing.

Unclog Pores

Clogged pores lead to the dreaded body acne! When you eliminate dead skin cells, this helps keep your pores clear.

Prevent In-Grown Hairs

Lots of people get these from shaving. Exfoliation really helps with this!

Reduce Hyperpigmentation

Reduce hyperpigmentation—some of those dark spots (gasp! age spots!) on your skin are near the surface. Exfoliation may help some of these dark spots fade.

Keep Your Skin From Drying Out

Your skin will be less dry—in order for your lotion to do its job, it has to work through layers of dead skin. When you exfoliate, your cleansers and moisturizers will work way better. Super busy? Kudarat skincare’s amazing line of 100% natural body scrubs do double duty. The moisturizers are built-in so that as you exfoliate, your skin is also deeply moisturized.

Sunless Tanning

Trust me, you want to exfoliate before getting into the spray-tan booth or slathering on your sunless lotion! Otherwise, you’re tanning a bunch of dead skin cells. This means your tan won’t look even and it won’t last as long as it should. It’s pretty gross when you have clumps of tanned skin coming off. Yuck. Just…yuck.

Time out for a quick and kinda gross bit of information—90% of the dust in your home is dead skin cells. Well, I may have to debate this just a little because I have 3 German Shepherds, but seriously, yep, that nice little layer of dust you didn’t have time to wipe away this week is mostly from you. I think I’d rather have this taken care of in the shower!

A question I get asked all the time is “how often should you exfoliate”? There’s really no right or wrong answer. It really depends on your skin. Also, the climate you live in as well as the season (and even your “Aunt Marge’s monthly visit”) will affect how often you need to take care of business. I generally exfoliate twice a week unless it’s the dead of winter and I’m in the mountains where it’s super dry. In that case, I’ll exfoliate up to 4 times a week. Just pay attention to your skin and give it that extra little dose of love when it needs it. I’m so addicted to how wonderful and healthy my skin feels after I’ve spent the time to exfoliate. I know that once you get into the habit, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without scrubbing away!

So, that leads us to the question of what kind of scrub should we use? By all means, please use a natural scrub! I’ll cover all the reasons why in upcoming blogs, but suffice it to say, our skin is our largest organ and we absorb everything we put on it. How we take care of it really matters!